Word: quarters
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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This was not forthcoming last week. Having lost from one-fifth to one-quarter of all his troops-and probably having nearly half his Army so disorganized as to be out of action-Marshal Graziani was in turn praying for help from home. The disorganization of his armies was the more complete in that most of their attack equipment, massed in the east for a drive on Alexandria and Cairo, had been lost. (The British were astonished at how heavily the Italians had planned to travel, and also at curious shortages in the equipment, especially steel helmets, barbed wire.) Graziani...
When Detroit's production lines, as though fleeing conscription, raced down the last quarter at 120,000 units a week, pessimists anticipated an inventory accumulation. Yet sales were too fast for dealers to keep more than one month's stock on the floors. Meantime the factories, still dodging priorities, managed to get in some advanced retooling (more facelifting) for the 19425. Having led every U. S. boom since 1921, Detroit could not be counted out of 1940-5. And it managed to keep its arms work (G. M. contracts alone totaled $400,000,000) as a sideline...
...consumers bought new cars partly in fear of priorities, they bought other things because they had money to spend. Retail sales in 1940's last quarter ran about 10% ahead of 1939. Sears and Montgomery Ward, whose sales reflect farm buying, set new sales records in 1940-10-15% above...
...keep secret last week, but Blitz death figures were available, significant. These add up to the fact that, taking the British life-insurance business as a whole, the extra risk which the Blitz has imposed on underwriting firms thus far is an additional burden of less than one quarter of one per cent. Of the 47,000,000 people in the United Kingdom, the Führer's assaults had killed up to Oct. 31 only 14,700. Accordingly, Winston Churchill last week proposed no immediate Government venture in blanket wartime life insurance, although it was rumored in Whitehall...
...Madden's "poor party" is a New York institution. So is Joe Madden. Born Joseph Augustin Penzo, son of an Italian baker "who was O.K. except all his life he never possessed change of a quarter," Joe grew up on Manhattan's tough West Side. When he was in the fourth grade, he hit his teacher "on the francis" with an eraser because she laughed at the way he spelled Philadelphia. When the truant officers found him, ten days later, he was sent to reform school. There he met an Irish kid named Frankie Madden, leader...